First new UK pumped hydro scheme for 30 years given go-ahead

Construction of the first grid-scale electricity storage facility to be built in Britain for more than 30 years could begin as early as 2018 following granting of planning permission for the scheme.

Abandoned slate quarries at Glyn Rhonwy, Snowdonia

Developer Snowdonia Pumped Hydro (SPH) has been given the go-ahead by the UK government to turn two abandoned slate quarries at Glyn Rhonwy near Llanberis in North Wales into water reservoirs that will store some 700MWh of electricity—sufficient to supply 200,000 homes with electricity for seven hours a day over a projected operational lifetime of 125 years or more.

The £160m facility will use surplus electricity, for example from wind and solar sources, to pump water through an underground tunnel from the lower to the upper reservoir.

When lack of wind or sunshine reduces renewable power output, or when fossil fuel generators fail to start, the water will flow back down the tunnel, spinning a turbine in an underground chamber to regenerate the stored electricity at a power output of 99.9MW.

The only visible evidence of the pumped hydro storage facility will be a modest building on an industrial park, and two reservoirs contained by slate dams blending with existing slate tips, whose water levels silently rise and fall each day.

The UK currently has four pumped hydro storage sites, the youngest of which was built with taxpayers’ money more than 30 years ago. SPH is seeking private equity funds to build the Glyn Rhonwy scheme without public money.

Pumped hydro provides over 90 per cent of the world’s electricity storage, and countries including the US, South Africa, Australia and China are among those expanding their national pumped hydro fleets as they seek to balance the intermittency of wind and solar.

In Britain it was thought that only a limited number of mountainous areas were suitable for pumped hydro sites, but SPH claims that the UK could build some 50GWh of pumped hydro storage using unconventional sites like ex-industrial quarries, coastal locations and existing drinking water reservoirs.

“There are signs that the government is taking storage seriously,” said SPH managing director Dave Holmes. “The National Infrastructure Commission last year urged swift action on storage, and a team inside the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is looking urgently at how planning barriers and market disincentives to storage can be addressed. We see the grant of permission for our Glyn Rhonwy scheme as highly significant, signalling a real change that will enable the UK to meet carbon reduction targets, while keeping electricity supply secure and prices for consumers under control.”

The Glyn Rhonwy facility is expected to bring a significant economic boost to North Wales, supporting hundreds of jobs during the construction phase and creating up to 30 high quality full time local positions to operate the site for its 125 years or more service lifetime.

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“The £160m facility will use surplus electricity, for example from wind and solar sources,”

When have we ever had surplus electricity from wind and solar sources ???
If the wind blows & the sun shines it shows as a slight reduction in CCGT use.
With solar you get a short ~4GW spike (from 13GW installed) some days.http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

excellent point
presumably big coal and big nuclear cannot be scaled back quickly enough?
what is the lowest generation rate overnight?
how much spare capacity is there in the 7 economy hours? i e how much could night-time use increase at if at all without bringing in more power – A) in mild winter weather
B) in autumn / spring
C) in summer?

There are plenty of occasions when we have too much/little power provided to the grid. For example, the preferred solution would be to ramp up/down the power grid slowly. Otherwise you have to have ‘peaker’ gas plants on constant standby (at high prices) for the inevitable dramatic power changes when Eastenders finishes and the population switch the kettle on en-masse. The next generation of offshore wind will include 2-3x the current levels, meaning wind will probably supply 20-30% of all requirements by 2028. We’ll see how it pans out. Pumped storage is a no-brainer great idea.

And we could stop subsidizing nuclear, coal, and oil, and demand a refund for the past 60 years of
subsidies for them. Why do you expect renewables to be the only form of energy that is NOT subsidized?

“700MWhs of electricity—sufficient to supply 200,000 homes with electricity for seven hours a day”
Sounds good…..BUT….

700,000 / 7 / 200,000 = 0.5 kWh per house …. That’s just 1 x 60w bulb for 8 hrs!
This time of year we use 22kWh / day. Even if we said 5kWh, there maybe 180,000 disappointed consumers.
Or have I missed something ???

Lets say that my residence uses an average of 9kWH energy per day. 7 hrs divided by 24 hrs multipled by 9kWhrs gives me an average useage of 2.625 kWhrs during those seven hours. That’s 2.625kWhrs of energy consumed by my residence in seven hours, on average.

If I have a 700,000kWhrs energy resource and a typical residence uses 2.625kWhrs during seven hours: 700,000 kWhrs divided by 2.625 kWhrs gives 266,667.

Hence the 700,000kWhr energy source can supply the average energy consumed by 266,667 typical residences in a seven hour period.

How much average power will each residence receive? A 100,000kW source supplying 266,667 residences: 100,000kW / 266,667 = 0.345kW. Each residence will receive an average supply of 345Watts, which is enough to power your fridge freezer and LED lights, but might struggle with peak loads, and certainly don’t all turn on your washing machines at the same time.

At 1saveenergy: no in your sums there you have mixed the units. You divide an energy storage capacity by a time and a number of homes you get power per home not energy per home. Then you divide that power by time which gives you a nonsence answer.

At 100MW for 200000 homes the storage system will provide a power of 500 watts per home which compares to 4600 kwh per year average for a uk house. Divide by 365 days and by 24 hours gives 530watts average. So they are about right in their claim.

People can argue about the ins and outs of the maths relating to the scheme’s output, but however you look at it, pumped hydro is proven technology that can almost be switched on and off to suit demand. How many hours (or days?) would it take for a nuclear or coal-fired plant to wind up or down? With hydro, you can open or close the gates and have a virtually instantaneous effect on the output. Perhaps 100MW is small by comparison to other sources, but I’d rather rely on a project like this than a farce like Hinkley Point

This is brilliant for grid stability. We need a lot more of these or link into the Norway grid – which I think is happening anyway. Another piece in the puzzle for moving over to renewables. Huge cudos to SPH. 🙂 🙂